The New Definition of Nations

I recently was thinking about how we define countries, and it occurred to me that, all too often, our North American methodology of understanding nations gets in the way of allowing those nations the opportunity to define themselves. Examples include defining a country by an export, landmark, or event. In order to resolve this to some small degree, I am hereby publishing a small, alternative directory to some unfairly chliched nations, along with a new reason for knowing them. Feel free to add more in the comments, though. Let's begin:

1. Greenland: World's highest internet penetration rate.

2. Niger: World's highest fertility rate.

3. Rwanda: World record for women representation in Parliament at 56.25 percent of contested Parliamentary seats being filled by women, a total of 44 seats.

4. Singapore: World's most innovative nation, according to business.rediff.com

5. Qatar: World's highest GDP at PPP per capita, based on the International Monetary Fund in 2008.

6. China: World's highest account balance, at $426.1 billion in 2008.

7. UK: Acclaimed world's highest television penetration rate.

8. Iceland: World's highest reported crime rate.

9. Canada: World's longest bridge over ice-covered saltwater (Confederation Bridge).

10. And finally, The United States of America: World's highest rate of obesity.

I hope that this short list will help you to re-define your existing views of the importance of the nations of the world, as well as to formulate your own opinions on other countries. Again, feel free to comment on additional ones I may have left out (there are only 195 countries, leaving 185 for you to highlight).

The Epic Voyage

So now I'm finally going to tell you about my amazing journey down to Southern. I drove all by myself for two and a half days with no food or music, just to see if I could. It was really fun and a great experience. I went through; British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Tennessee again. It was sweet, but I was really super glad to get to school finally. Here's a documentary I made of my trip:

Looking Back Over My Squandered Summer

In the past four months, I:
-Went to like three national parks.
-Took an entire week to drive back from school, instead of the typical three days.
-Ripped up sand dunes in an ATV.
-Failed to unpack from college.
-Went to what is probably the biggest woodworking/forestry show in the World.
-Watched as 30 grown men got hopelessly drunk.
-Went to Poland for lunch.
-Purchased a synthesizer.
-Took advanced kitchen design software training.
-Re-discovered/visited Apni Haweli, undoubtedly the best Indian restaurant this side of Asia.
-Deferred to Joe Clark on the train.
-Saw my awesome Pakistani sister twice.
-Finally received my synthesizer.
-Discovered how to NOT be an idiot when purchasing for a corporation.
-Fell in love with a lot of new music.
-Learned disturbing facts about people, facts I would have been better off not knowing.
-Took close-ups of the moon.
-Fell hopelessly behind on my reading through of the Bible in one year.
-Posted my best demo so far to my music site.
-Got up early to watch the Sun rise.
-Got a tiny new camera.
-Sat on a train for 2 days straight.
-Found out-but didn't really care-that Michael Jackson died.
-Realized my dog died.
-Learned how to REALLY drive a boat.
-Made friends.
-Watched a forest fire spring up within 5 kilometers of my house.
-Watched the aforementioned fire be put out by a water bomber that flew directly over my house.
-Resolved to be in about four bands.
-Became an officer of a university club.
-Pieced together a personal, cloud-driven online library of instantly-accessible PDFs.
-Learned how to somewhat play the guitar (more).
-Discovered that I'm still quite happy being single.
-Became a grammar Nazi.
-Caught my first fish, and then 3 more.
-Bought the biggest slurpee of my life.
-Went to the dentist 6 times.
-Missed many of my friends.
-Blogged seven times, including this post.
-Learned a crapload about everything.
-Loved life.

I always come to a full and complete stop.

I always come to a full and complete stop.
I keep my tray table up, and my seat back in the full upright position.
I don't speed.
I have never been in a fight.
I always wear a seatbelt.
I have never been arrested.
I shoplifted once, but on closer inspection, it turned out to be a freebie anyway.
I go to the eye doctor once a year.
I always drink plenty of water.
I have never punched someone in the face.
I get good grades.
I always look both ways before crossing the street.
And I love it.
And I hate it.

The Death of a Titan

The world needs to be rid of Microsoft. Microsoft's products reflect mere minor innovations in the thought processes of old, and our advancing world needs to be able to say no to this giant when we want to, instead of having its bloated and insecure products always shoved in our faces in a proprietary fashion. In addition, there remains an intense desire in the world for free and open software that is secure and well-maintained, and sadly Microsoft does not adhere to any of these standards. However, freedom may never be found, as developers and publishers the world over merely adhere to Microsoft's reign of terror, churning out new Microsoft-dependent software year after year. This makes it nearly impossible for Microsoft's users to escape their icy grasp of death, as the tangle of a downward spiral of proprietary dependency gets tighter and tighter. The reason that we may never be free is this: Everyone is too scared. Users are too scared to use something different, because of the unfamiliarity and the fact that the software they are accustomed to is not present on other platforms. Their fears are well-founded, because application developers and publishers are scared as well. They are fearful that if they make the jump to open solutions, their fearful customers won't be able to follow them. Their fears have a fair basis as well. Lastly, open platform developers are scared as well. They are scared that, should they overreach their boundaries, they will be left with no market share and no users to support them. Thus, they continue moving forward at snail paces to ensure that they always remain safe. And yes, the fears of open platform developers are just as legitimate as those of end users and application developers and publishers. The key to breaking this chain of imprisonment is, obviously, for everyone to just stop being scared and take the plunge. I know it sounds crazy, but users, developers, and publishers need to make choices based on their true wants and intentions, not completely on a comfort and cash basis. If we all just do our best to contribute to the global cause for open systems and software, and involve ourselves in them, we may attain freedom one day. Oh, and by the way, I actually like Microsoft Office (I can stand XP too), but that is it.
Thrive on some links:
SourceForge
Ubuntu
OpenOffice
How to Kill Microsoft
Wine
It's a start: Paint.net
Getting warmer: GIMP
Mozilla
Open Video
VLC
Pidgin
AbiWord
Audacity
Ardour
HandBrake
Android
And my favorite (even though, ironically, it's only for Windows at the current time): Chrome

Oweee...

I think I blew my speakers... :(

Hotels

So, a funny story from yesterday:
Me and my dad had reserved a Montrealean hotel a few days before we left. However, when we got to the hotel, the clerk seemed to have a very hard time looking us up. He could see us in the system, but there was no reservation intact. We all stood there bewildered for awhile, until he looked at our confirmation papers. He looked concerned and told us that we had registered at a completely different hotel. However, he said that he had some rooms empty so we could change our previous reservation for one at this hotel. Unfortunately, his only rooms were smoking, and we would have to change rooms in the morning. Seeing this as the only option, we continued with the registration process until me and my dad looked at the papers one more time and realized that the hotel we had signed up for was in the town of Laval. Now, the airport we fly into is in Dorval, a suburb of Montreal. However, the company where we are conducting our training is in Laval. The initial problem had arisen when we mixed up the city names and signed up for a hotel in the town of Laval, which was familiar to us because of where our training takes place. We had stayed in the hotel at Dorval before so that's where we expected we had booked this time, which is why we were initially disappointed to have registered at the hotel in Laval. However, we were tickled to find out that the hotel we had actually made a reservation at was a mere five minutes from our daily destination. So, upon learning this, we told the clerk at the Dorval hotel that we would just go stay at Laval, and thus were able to wake up about 30 minutes later than we would have had to otherwise. Hurrah for life!
Tyler